Dandelion
by PenPistola
Summary: -"And I am not frightened of dying; any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime." Jet's last moments on earth.


**A/N:** This concept has been done before, but it was such a touching moment that I couldn't stay away. Quote by Pink Floyd.

Whoever had told him dying was easy was a damn liar. For one, the pain was excruciating. Jet felt everything around him, from the blunt, terrible agony inside him to the dig of the rocks in his back. He could sense in some distant, disconnected way as each of his organs began to shut down, and the icy terror of that reality only tightened the knot in his chest. It was dark here, and cold, too cold. Intensely aware of Smellerbee's hovering presence beside him, he forced out with all that he could muster, "Take me outside." He heard her choke, and despite himself the corner of his mouth drew into a smirk. She always was protective when it came to him. She went from being Smellerbee, the ineffable Freedom Fighter, to Bee, concerned and mothering. It usually freaked him out when she went into worry mode, but now it seemed appropriate. Endearing.

He felt Smellerbee move to carry out his request, her arms gently working under his neck and shoulders to lift him while Longshot supported his lower body and legs. It was like floating on air--only much more solid. Jet laughed. He ignored Longshot's concerned expression and Smellerbee's poorly hidden tears. They only served to remind him of the pain that wracked his body, which was still very, very real. If he ignored it, it didn't go away. It just... receded.

So instead, he focused on the sensation he felt when they began to move, the faint tingle deep in his spine that told him they were changing directions. He never had turned out to be an Earthbender like his parents had hoped for, but even so he had always seemed to know certain things. Had a great sense of direction. They were getting closer to the surface. Each step jarred him, but instead of the pain, he counted steps. A hundred. Five hundred.

Somewhere in there he lost count, his head going fuzzy and swimming through a replay of everything that had happened to him recently. He'd made so many mistakes in his short life, refusing to see most of them until it was too late to fix them. He'd let his anger blind him, done so many things to be ashamed of. Katara... Even that Li guy... "No use regretting the past," his father had always said, especially when Jet had just done something particularly stupid or clumsy. "What's done is done. All you can do now is everything you can to make it right." Jet had always lived by that tenet. At least, he'd tried to. He'd tried to start over in Ba Sing Se, as hard as it had been. He hadn't fixed everything yet, but damn it, he'd been _trying_. Now it didn't look like there was anything else he could do, and he felt a pang of regret course through him. If only he'd stopped to think before he'd done those terrible things in the first place. If only... _Pain. Painpainpain. _Time to think about something else. Surface. He'd bet a million gold pieces they were almost there.

He had no idea how much time had passed when the proof came that his hunch was right. Could have been hours, could have been minutes. He couldn't tell. All he knew was that one second they were in the dark, in the tunnels under the ground beneath Lake Laogai, and the next it seemed as if he were on the surface of the sun. It was so bright. Jet concentrated on blocking out the gray throb of the pain and focused on the heat of the sun now warming his skin. He liked it.

"Where are we?" he groaned after he'd waited a while to gather his strength. They were still walking uphill, and judging by the sounds of muffled crunching under Longshot's and Smellerbee's feet, through the grass.

"Outside," Smellerbee answered, and her voice broke. "Nobody's bothering us. It's like they're all somewhere else." Jet hoped silently that it was because the Avatar was giving the Dai Li hell. "We made it out of the tunnels and now we're walking toward the fields away from the lake."

"Take me someplace high," he croaked, swallowing blood.

"Okay."

They walked on for a little further and the ground leveled out. The crunching of the grass under his friends' feet softened a bit, and with effort, he looked down to see that they were walking across a patch of wispy white wildflowers.

"Stop here," Jet said with a motion of his hand. It surprised him how small and weak his voice sounded, but it didn't matter. Right here was fine.

"Flowers, really? I wouldn't have pegged you for it." Jet glanced at Smellerbee and grinned weakly. So strange that even now she was cracking half-assed jokes, though he couldn't blame her--it _was _pretty hilarious. It looked like she was trying not to cry. Even Longshot sported a wan little half-smile.

"Just put me down," he smirked with difficulty. The sudden jarring impact of being set down made him wince, and Smellerbee's lips pursed, but he didn't care. It still hurt. It hurt like nothing had ever hurt him before. But it was fading a little around the edges, like maybe it wasn't real. Jet held on to that thought and focused instead on the prickling sensation of the grass beneath him and the warmth of the sun. _That_ was real.

Jet's hand groped until he felt the wispy little petals of one of the wildflowers beneath his fingers. He gripped it loosely and pulled a little, and the thick, watery stem snapped. He brought it up to his face with a shaky arm and examined its silhouette against the sun. It wasn't like any flower he'd ever seen. It had hundreds of tiny seeds, each with its own feathery little parachute. The whole thing was shaped like a ball, its surface criss-crossed with a network of the feathery petals. For being a simple, common weed, the thing was pretty complex. This was the kind of flower people stepped all over when they walked through the fields. Nobody grew it in their gardens, and most people paid no heed to it at all. But Jet was glad he had. When you stopped to take a closer look at it, it became beautiful in its own way.

Jet took in a deep, shuddering breath, unconcerned by the numbness that was beginning to spread throughout his torso. He was sure, earlier, that something had pierced a lung. He'd labored to breathe, and then it was only shallowly. This strange ataraxia made it easier. With a grin he let the breath go, and dozens of tiny seeds took flight. A few hung suspended and began to drift back to the ground, but the rest caught the breeze and spiraled upward, away toward the sun and the clouds and the sky that was so, so blue. His hand fell shakily back to the ground, his fingers still limply wrapped around the flower stem.

Smellerbee took Jet's other hand in hers, watching with him as the seeds dispersed. Longshot shifted and put his arm around Smellerbee, smiling one of his deep, rare smiles at the two of them. "You okay?" Smellerbee asked Jet, but the tenderness in her voice was less out of concern and more of a quiet sort of acceptance. She gave his hand in hers a little squeeze.

"Never better," Jet breathed. How strange to find it was the truth. He could feel his pain slipping away, like the last vestiges of a dream he was waking up from. All those mistakes seemed so far away, from another time and place. He had hope that things would turn out okay. He'd never doubted that the Avatar--no, _Aang_--would set the world right, and suddenly it didn't seem so bad that he would never leave this place. There were things he would have liked to do, people he wished he could meet, and experiences he would never know. But it was okay. He could feel a peaceful calm settling over him, and vaguely he wondered if this was how Aang felt all the time.

He was connected to Smellerbee sitting next to him by the warmth of her hand, and to Longshot's steady presence, just out of reach, through her. But just like the pain, he could feel them fading as well. That was okay, too. He still felt all the love in their hearts directed at him, and it made him want to cry. It was what he would carry with him, always. He began to let go of the last of the anger and the pain, and the suffering he'd endured, and all that was _left_ was love.

It seemed like the sky was calling him upward. There was a pull, tugging at his heart, his very center. He followed it with his eyes, smiling at the blinding white of the sun. He thought he could see things--a vague movement here or there, out of the corner of his eye, or the faint outline of some unknown place or thing. Whatever it was, it felt warm. Familiar, almost. Wherever it was taking him, he wanted to go.

"Go on," Smellerbee said, and Longshot smiled in agreement. "You've been in pain long enough."

Jet nodded faintly, returning their smiles with as much strength as he could. He knew he made a sight, hair matted and a thin trail of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He didn't know _how_ he knew, only that just like everything else around him, it felt like his attachment to his own body was slowly fading. He barely felt it when Smellerbee placed her hand tenderly on his forehead and drew his hair back.

"We'll miss you," she said, rubbing at her nose with her other arm. Her voice sounded almost as if he were hearing it through water.

"I... I'll miss you too." He closed his eyes, but the blue of the sky and the light of the sun did not go away. "Take care." He knew they'd be okay.

Death was like letting go of an old friend--all bittersweet and soft. He stood in the grass, the light at his back, watching as the scene before him began to dissolve away to nothingness. The voice from before was calling him, calling his name, and it took all his effort not to tear his eyes away from where Longshot and Smellerbee sat with his body for one last moment.

"Bye," he smiled. He wasn't even sure the two would be able to hear him, but whether they did or not, one last whispered word caught his ear before the whole world turned to white. Longshot.

"Goodbye..."

And then everything faded.

He was vaguely aware that he was walking, on toward the voice that continued to call him. There was no up, nor down, only the blinding white light that engulfed his vision. Dim shapes and outlines began to manifest in the brightness, as if his eyes were beginning to adjust, and he struggled to make out his surroundings. Very slowly, they began to resolve themselves into something recognizable. The grass still crunched beneath his feet, and when he looked down it was green, as green as he'd ever seen it, and studded with tiny wildflowers. His gaze traveled upward, to where, like a dream, the landscape before him began to waver into view. There was something about it... something _familiar._

He paused beside a large, gnarled tree, placing his hand upon the bark. It felt rough, and warmed by the sun directly above. So he could feel again. There was no pain, though, and Jet was beginning to forget what it had ever felt like. There was something about this place that drew him in. Something peaceful. He took a step forward, and it felt as if he had crossed a boundary.

Birdsong came off the trees in the distance, and the lazy call of cicadas hummed in his throat. It was late spring, perhaps early summer. In the distance he could see the tops of the wheat fields, new shoots still wispy and green. There was a home, built low to the ground, stone-walled and thatch-roofed. Next to it was a tall barn and attached silo. A wooden fence enclosed a little yard and paddock, and inside roamed a chestnut mare, who raised her head and flicked her ears at him in recognition. "Yalka," Jet breathed, his heart fluttering wildly in his chest.

"Jet," said a voice in the distance, and he knew immediately that it had been the one to call him. He turned, gazing at the open entranceway of the home, where two figures stood. At first they wavered, but then like a mirage melting away, they began to solidify. There was a man, tall and broad, and rough in the ways that Jet himself was rough. His arm rested on the shoulder of the woman standing beside him, small, steady, beautiful. Jet felt his mouth stretch into an impossibly wide grin, and tears prickled at the corners of his eyes for the first time.

"Mom! Dad!" He took off at a run, ignoring the saltwater blinding his vision. He closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds, flinging himself with carefree abandon at the couple. They caught him in their arms.

"Oh, Jet," his mother sobbed into his hair, squeezing him as his father embraced them both. "We knew you'd come back." Jet nodded wordlessly against her.

"It took you long enough," his father said, trying to sound gruff, but the smile in his voice belied his happiness.

Jet didn't want to let go of either of them, but eventually he forced himself to pull away. "Yeah," he said, rubbing at his eyes with his elbow. "It did. But I... I took so many wrong turns to get here. I made so many mistakes, Dad." He looked up at the taller man, expecting to see a frown, but instead he saw the same knowing smile the man had always given him as a child.

"What's done is done," his father rumbled, and his mother nodded her agreement. "No use regretting it. You did everything you could." Here the older man wrapped his arm around his son again, reassuring, pulling him close in unabashed affection. "You did well."

"Thanks, Dad," Jet beamed, feeling the tears coming once again. His father released him and the three of them went inside, where they could smell dinner cooking, shutting the door behind them.

He was _home_.


End file.
